2B — Thursday, February 2, 2017
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

On January 21st, I was one 

in a million — one in more 
than 3 million people who 
marched 
in 
the 
Women’s 

March on Washington and 
its sister marches worldwide. 
There were marches in each 
of the 50 states, including 
thousands of people in Alaska 
who marched through negative 
temperatures and falling snow. 
Crowd scientists estimate the 
marches are the largest protest 
in American history and that 
the crowds in Washington D.C. 
outnumbered those at Trump’s 
inauguration three times over 
— a fact that’s apparently made 
POTUS very upset.

That’s where I was the 

day 
after 
the 
inauguration 

— Washington D.C. I flew 
in on Friday, the day of the 
inauguration. 
Trump 
was 

preparing to be sworn in while 
I was 39,000 feet above the 
country, and became president 
shortly after I touched down in 
Baltimore.

I met my mom there. She’s 

been fighting this sort of fight 
much longer than I have. She’s 
a teacher, and has taught in 
public 
schools 
in 
Chicago 

and Baltimore — schools that 
serve predominantly minority 
students, schools where every 
student 
qualifies 
for 
free 

lunches, 
schools 
with 
the 

lowest reading scores in their 
city. She knows what’s at stake.

We marched with my mom’s 

college roommate (from her 
time at the University) Lori 
and her daughter Kira. None 
of us had participated in this 
sort of protest before, but we all 
felt the weight of the political 
moment too heavily to remain 
silent.

It’s hard to say whose idea it 

was to go. I remember calling 
my mom in the yard of Betsy 
Barber — a place that I felt 
safe for public crying — on the 
morning after the election. I’ll 
never forget how upset I was 
that day, how quiet campus 
was, the way we all looked 
at each other as if to say, “I’m 
sorry.” But when I spoke to her 
she reminded me that it was 
going to be OK. Because we 
were going to fight. And we 

weren’t going to stop fighting 
until it was OK.

I’m so grateful I got to go 

with my mom, the woman 
who raised me to be strong 
and smart and outspoken. The 
person off whom I’ve modeled 
much of myself.

LSA 
sophomore 
Kellie 

Lounds was also one of the 
500,000 people who descended 
on the National Mall that day. 
She drove all the way from 
Ann Arbor to D.C. with a group 
of female students from the 
University.

“I felt like I was going 

to regret it if I didn’t go … 
because I knew it was going to 
be a historic amount of people 
showing up. I had been feeling 
sort of down — especially with 
the inauguration and I knew 
that I needed something to 
jumpstart me.”

As a member of University’s 

chapter of College Democrats 
and chair of the female-interest 
sub-group, FemDems, Kellie 
Lounds knows that activism 
doesn’t end when the march 
does — a concern of many 
activists who were wary of the 
march’s ability to motivate the 
public in the long term.

“I think it’s a good place 

to start. The fact that 500 
(or however many hundred) 
thousand people showed up 
matters because it shows that 
people care. But I don’t think 
it’s the end-all-be-all solution,” 
Lounds said.

That “where do we go from 

here” sentiment was something 
shared among many of the 
women I’ve spoken to before 
and after the March.

For Lounds, the next step 

is to be a better ally for those 
who are affected more acutely 
by Trump’s policies, as well 
as for those who have largely 
been pushed out of mainstream 
activist movements.

“While I was at the March I 

didn’t really think about this at 
all but after we got done I read 
a lot of articles about how a lot 
of signage and messaging wasn’t 
very trans-inclusive,” Lounds 
said, “It made me check myself 
and be like, ‘You showed up and 
that’s good, but you can always 
be a better ally.’”

The March forced a lot of 

people to check their places as 
activists, myself included, and 
woke some people up to the 
necessity of their voices in an 
ongoing fight for justice and 
equality — a response that many 
felt was overdue. 

LSA 
sophomore 
Hannah 

Foster echoed that sentiment, 
calling on her peers to remain 
attentive to issues that might 
not impact them directly.

“More 
than 
anything 
I 

think it’s important to educate 
ourselves about the new policies 
being put in place,” Foster 
said, “to keep ourselves from 
becoming apathetic about the 

injustices happening now — 
which can be hard to do when 
these policies don’t affect you 
personally.”

That’s something I’m guilty 

of, not showing up until my 
rights were at stake. That sort 
of reversal of attitude made 
many 
people 
whose 
rights 

have always been on the line 
feel 
uncomfortable 
about 

the march. Much has been 
written about the division that 
still exists among a group of 

seemingly — if only by location 
— united people. The worry that 
people were only marching for 
themselves seemed to be the 
lingering concern shared among 
many following the March.

To some extent I would say, 

yes, I’m sure many of the people 
who flooded the streets of D.C. 
the day after the inauguration 
would not have been there had 
Trump’s 
promised 
policies 

(which we’re now seeing put 
into place at an alarming speed) 
not affected their lives directly. 
It was the first time at a major 
protest for everyone in my group, 
but I’m sure it won’t be our last. 
As a sign at a #NoBan protest 
suggested, protests are going 
to become a regular activity for 
many who got their first taste at 
the Women’s March.

This delayed response was 

understandably frustrating for 
many whose lives have been 
monumentally shaped by public 
policy long before the Trump 
era. Foster recognizes what’s 
at stake for many people in 
this country under a Trump 
presidency.

“It’s 
hard 
not 
to 
be 

overwhelmed 
by 
the 
sheer 

number of things I feel the need 
to speak out against and I’ve had 
some difficulty figuring out how 
to begin,” Foster said. “It helps 
to stay connected with other 
people who also feel obligated 
to work against some of what is 
happening.”

Because 
in 
addition 
to 

unifying a group of like-minded 
people, the March highlighted 
the divisions that exist even 
within 
liberal, 
progressive 

activism. Divisions along the 
lines of race, sexuality and 
religion were still visible, even 
at an event designed as a unifier.

What the Women’s March 

did is set a precedent for how 
to respond to the inevitable 
injustices of this presidency. 

Since that day protests have 
erupted across the country 
in response to the green-
lighting of the Dakota Access 
and Keystone Pipelines and, 
most recently, to Trump’s ban 
on immigration from seven 
Muslim-majority 
countries. 

The 
Women’s 
March 
was 

the first, and many feared it 
would be the last. And while 
the subsequent protests haven’t 
brought out the same numbers, 
their size relative to their 
spontaneity seems to be owed — 
in a small part at least — to the 
example of activism set by the 
Women’s March.

“Being in D.C. with hundreds 

of thousands of other people 
who shared my concerns was 
absolutely 
surreal,” 
Foster 

said of the lasting power of the 
march. “I left empowered and 
energized when before I felt 
scared and helpless. I’ll never 
forget it.”

For 
LSA 
sophomore 
Ana 

Patchin, she felt that her hope 
for the country — which had 
dampened since the election — 
was energized at the March.

“I 
was 
standing 
outside 

the Smithsonian Museum of 
American History, and I watched 
as a crowd of people carried a 
copy of the Constitution that 
they had crafted out of burlap 
down 
Constitution 
Avenue,” 

Patchin recalled. “That image 
has stuck with me. It serves as a 
reminder to me of how each and 
every day the people have the 
opportunity to carry the values 
that we believe in.”

Patchin described how hard it 

had been for her to believe in the 
goodness of America after the 
election — a feeling I, and many 
others, shared. She described a 
feeling of pride in the country 
on that morning and a great 
hope for its future as she joined 
the crowds on the mall.

“Every day I am finding 

so 
many 
reasons 
to 
feel 

disheartened,” 
Patchin 
said. 

“However, the march, and the 
action that people all across the 
U.S. have taken as a result, gives 
me a great deal of hope.”

While the Women’s March 

on Washington set a precedent 
for national activism, the same 
happened on a local level as 
thousands marched right here 
in Ann Arbor, in a sister march 
organized by Progressives at 
the University of Michigan and 
Michigan to Believe In.

“It all happened so fast,” 

said Public Policy junior Claire 
Cepuran, who organized the 
march with LSA sophomore 
Brad 
McPherson 
and 
LSA 

sophomore Robert Joseph. They 
didn’t know they were marching 
until 
early 
January, 
when 

Michigan to Believe In reached 
out to them about co-sponsoring 
the event. 

“Following the election there 

were a lot of people feeling 
upset and like they wanted to do 

something and get involved and 
show their solidarity somehow, 
but they didn’t really know how 
and this seemed like a really 
good outlet for that,” Cepuran 
said.

She felt a deep connection to 

the March and what it stood for, 
and was motivated to march for 
many of the same reasons other 
women were.

“Gender issues have always 

been really important to me … 
that’s why the women’s march 
was so cool and was so close 
to my heart,” Cepuran said. 
“I’ve always sort of felt that 
inequality.”

Cepuran, 
McPherson 
and 

Joseph 
run 
Progressives 
at 

the University of Michigan, a 
student organization started at 

the end of last semester with the 
goal of getting more progressive 
candidates into office on the 
city, county and state levels.

“I think there are a lot of 

progressive 
people, 
young 

people 
especially, 
who 
are 

not feeling represented by the 
Democratic 
Party,” 
Cepuran 

said. “We’re hoping to flood 
them with all of these young 
passionate people who want 
change.”

The meeting I attended last 

week attracted students as well 
as many Ann Arbor residents 
who feel passionately about 
similar causes. Everyone was 
eager to help in any way they 
could. For activists of all ages, 
the big question is still: What 
can I do next?

“There are two parts to 

making real change: You have to 
have the activism that focuses 
on expressing that there is a 
problem and then you have to 
focus on actual legislation and 
pushing for more parity between 
genders in government or in, 
say, the presidential cabinet,” 
McPherson said.

So now we’re on part two. 

The 
problems 
have 
been 

exposed, and are continuing to 
be exposed every day. We know 

what’s wrong. But it’s going to be 
hard to maintain the same level 
of energy that was achieved on 
January 21st.

I know I’m never going to 

forget how it felt when I got off 
the train at Judiciary Square 
and saw people lined up all 
the way down both sides of the 
platform. Or how it felt to hear 
someone in our car start singing 
“This Land is Your Land.”

But what I’m really never 

going to forget is how it felt on 
November 8th, watching the 
results come in as I sat in my 
friend’s apartment — the weight 
of the grief. And I’m never going 
to forget my dad calling me last 
Sunday to tell me how upset he 
was that his country, as a nation 
of 
immigrants, 
could 
turn 

against refugees looking for 
safety in a country that prided 
itself on its inclusivity.

I’m never going to forget 

how different it feels scrolling 
through 
my 
Twitter 
feed 

tonight, seeing piece after piece 
of my country fall apart and how 
it felt to stand on the top on the 
risers across from the National 
Archives and see people from 
the White House to the Capitol 
who believe, like I do, that 
America is better than a racist 
in an ill-fitting suit.

I’m lucky to have gotten to 

march with my mom. To have 
been able to fight alongside 
someone I know will never stop 
fighting for me. I’m so lucky 
to have been raised by people 
who set such a strong example 
of what it looks like to love and 
fight — and to forgive.

But I can’t just be lucky 

anymore. It’s time to make 
action out of the values I was 
raised with. Because it’s not just 
about surviving until midterms 
anymore. The March made it 
clear to me that this is much 
more urgent than I would have 
ever previously allowed myself 
believe.

At the end of the day it’s (sort 

of) simple: An international 
disease of hatred has produced 
a regime determined to turn an 
already divided nation against 
itself. It’s infuriating, but the 
best thing we can do is to stay 
angry, and to find in the midst 
of that anger some love for one 
another.

The 
Women’s 
March 
on 

Washington wasn’t perfect and 
it wasn’t the end, but what it did 
do was light a fire in the hearts 
of people of all ages and remind 
us that America is still worth 
fighting for.

MADELEINE GAUDIN

Senior Arts Editor

The Women’s March: What we 
saw and where we go from here

None of us had 
participated in 

this sort of protest 
before, but we all 

felt the weight

That’s something 
I’m guilty of, not 
showing up until 
my rights were at 

stake

For activists of 
all ages, the big 
question is still: 
What can I do 

next?

Senior Arts Editor Madeleine Gaudin tells of her and other’s experience at the 
Women’s March and meditates on the heavy uncertainty that is the future

MICHIGAN DAILY
MICHIGAN DAILY

MICHIGAN DAILY

